Nov 28, 2023

2024 Academy Awards Short Film Contender: "Worry World," directed by Jessica Patterson

Welcome to Cartoon Brew's spotlight series highlighting animated short films that have qualified for the 2024 Academy Awards. There are several ways for a film to qualify for an award. In this edition, we will focus on films that have won an Oscar-eligible award at a festival that is eligible for the Academy Awards.

Today's film is the Irish short "Worry World," directed by Jessica Patterson. The film won the James Hogan Award for Best Animated Short at the Galway Film Fleadh and qualified for an Academy Award.

In this film, a young factory worker dreams of escaping his black-and-white world. After a chance encounter with a free thinker, she and her new like-minded friends contemplate an escape from their oppressive environment.

Cartoon Brew: Corporate dystopias have been popular in the media for decades. Jessica Patterson:

Jessica Patterson: I've stopped going the traditional science fiction and especially the dark dystopian route. We didn't want to make the world of the film unrealistic, so instead we based it on what we know. Hugh O'Connor built a very deep worldview into his script, and from there I began to explore a visual setting that was very much inspired by my time spent in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Belfast has a wonderful mix of traditional and industrial. Georgian and modernist architecture sit side by side, plus the tall chimneys of shipbuilding cranes and factories tower over the coastal lanes. Physical examples of past social divisions still dot the city, with endless walls and gates separating communities; in the 1960s and 1970s, queues to enter and exit the city center were the norm. Despite these conditions, it was impressive to see people going about their lives as normal. I felt it was a perfect fit for a story about finding connection in a disconnected world.

What about this story and concept resonated with you and led you to take on the role of director? His idea of a world where all thoughts are visualized immediately captured my imagination, but as someone who, like many people, often internalizes thoughts, the concept of a world where this is impossible certainly resonated with me. It made me wonder how we deal with our brains, what we think about when we are not necessarily aware of our thoughts, and how much we would pay for the ability to turn off our thoughts if such a world existed. It also made me realize that in some ways, we as a society are already not that far from this idea. Many of us make it a habit to share our every thought on multiple social media platforms every day, so the little window overhead seemed like a not-so-distant concept I was looking forward to exploring further.

What have you learned about the production side, the filmmaking side, the creative side, or the subject matter through the experience of making this film? The vastness of the world and the possibilities of ideas underlying the story "If Everyone Could See Your Thoughts" allowed us to explore the depths of Hugh's script as much as we wanted. At one point it could have been a 30-minute special, but we realized we needed to pull it back and simplify the concept to just what we really cared about and wanted to show. Producer Shawna Cullen was a solid support when we overthought things and kept the team energized and moving throughout the production, which spanned two lockdowns.

How did you develop the visual approach for this film and why did you settle on this style/method? There is so much going on in the world of the story/short film that we felt that overcomplicating the design, especially of the characters, might take the audience away from the heart of the story.

We felt that there needed to be a visual separation between "thought" and "reality" so that the characters and camera could move in and out legibly throughout the story. With this in mind, we assigned structured, colorless line drawings to "reality," allowing for full color, pencil texture, and the lack of line drawings to represent the fluidity of "thought."

When looking at our characters, the overarching theme of disconnection led us to explore minimal, intentionally incomplete linework, always boiling and uncertain. The idea of capturing emotion and expression with a minimal number of lines appealed to me as an artist, and for this purpose I drew much inspiration from the work of cartoonist and author Liana Fink.